Moulin de la Galette

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Date:

1889

Artist:

Henri de Toulouse-LautrecFrench, 1864-1901

About this artwork

With this painting of the dance hall known as the Moulin de la Galette, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec established his reputation as the painter-chronicler of the entertainments of Montmartre. In this well-known image, Lautrec employed the wood barrier as a metaphorical divide between the frenzied action of the dance hall, seen as a blur in the background, and the stillness of the bored and waiting women (accompanied by a proprietary male) in the foreground. He used turpentine to thin his paint and applied it in loose washes, a technique known as peinture à l’essence. The result is a seemingly unfinished look that suggests both the immediacy of the artist’s observations and the dinginess of his subject.

Chicago, Art Institute, Catalogue of A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Lent from American Collections, June 1-November 1, 1933, p. 53 cat. 372 as A Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, 1889.

Chicago, Art Institute, Catalogue of A Century of Progress Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, June 1-November 1, 1934, p. 50 cat. 327 as A Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, 1889.